The Enlightenment (Unit 5, 5.1)

Enlightenment

An intellectual movement that applied new way of understanding, such as rationalism, and empiricist approaches to both the natural world and human relationships

Why is the Enlightenment important?

It provided the ideological framework for all the revolutions during this period

Rationalism

Argued that reason, rather than emotion or any external authority, is the most reliable source of true knowledge

Empiricism

Idea that true knowledge is gained through the senses, mainly through rigorous experimentation

Scientific Revolution

Scientists tossed biblical and religious authority out of the window and used the rigorous process of reason to discover how the world really worked

What complexities did you need to understand to experienced scientific breakthroughs?

Cosmos and Internal working of the human body

Why was the idea of the Scientific Revolution important?

Enlightenment philosophers applied these methods to the study of human society

What was a crucial components of the Enlightenment?

The questioning and re-examination of the role of religion in public life

What were the Enlightenment thinkers thoughts about Christianity?

Christianity is a revealed religion

The words of the Bible along with all its commands was revealed by god and therefore could not be questioned

What were the ways of relating to the Devine?

• Deism

  Exceedingly popular among Enlightenment thinkers

  Believed that there was a God that created all things then no longer intervened in the created order

• Atheism

  Complete rejection of religious belief and any notion of divine beings

Individualism

Most basic element of society was the individual human and not the collective groups

Progress and expansion of the individual > progress and expansion of the society

Natural Rights

Individual humans are born with certain rights that cannot be infringed upon by government or any other entity

John Locke - argued all humans were born with the natural rights of life, liberty, and property

Social Contract

Human societies, endowed with natural rights, must construct a government of their own will to protect their natural rights

If that government becomes a tyrannical turd, then those people have the right to overthrow that government and establish a new one

What were the effects of Enlightenment ideas?

Major Revolutions

Expansion of Suffrage

Abolition of Slavery

End of Serfdom

Calls for Women’s Suffrage

Major Revolutions

• Enlightenment ideas created the ideological context for these revolutions that occurred in this period, including the American, French, Haitian, and Latin American revolutions

• The Enlightenment's emphasis on the rejection of established traditions and new ideas about how political power ought to work played a significant role in each of these great upheavals

• Those revolutions in turn created the conditions for the intensification of nationalism

Nationalism

A sense of commonality among a people based on shared language, religion, social customs, and often linked with a desire for territory

Expansion of Suffrage

• Suffrage: Right to Vote

• After the American Revolution, laws were passed only white males with land could vote

  • But in the first half of the nineteenth century, laws were passed that recognized the right of all white males to vote

  • In the second half of the nineteenth century, black males had gained the right to vote

  • One significant reason was the Enlightenment ideas like liberty and equality were revered in America as part of the cultural heritage beginning with the Declaration of Independence

Abolition of Slavery

• Enlightenment thinkers criticize slavery on account of its complete for people’s natural rights, most notably liberty

• In response to a powerful abolitionist movement, Great Britain abolished slavery in 1807

  • Britain was also the wealthiest nation in the world and they gained much of that wealth during the Industrial Revolution by means of paid labor

  • Abolition was a natural move, but it also made economic sense at the time

• Enslaved people themselves also contributed to the abolition of slavery

  • Great Jamaica Revolt

    • Massive slave rebellion in British Jamaica

    • Scale and casualties of that rebellion played a significant role in Britain’s decision to abolish slavery throughout their empire

End of Serfdom

• In the midst of the transition from agricultural to industrial economies during the Industrial Revolution, serfs, which were peasants bound in coerced labor, became more and more unnecessary to economic flourishing 

• Peasant Revolts

  • Induced state leaders in England, France and Russia to abolish serfdom

Calls for Womens’ Suffrage

• Feminist Movement

  • Women began to advocate for rights in all areas of life, not least voting

• Olympe de Gouges

  • Her work, The Declaration of the Rights of Women and the Female Citizen, harshly criticized the French Constitution for sidelining women in the birth of post-revolutionary France

• Seneca Falls Convention in 1848

  • Women organized themselves in a gathering to call for a constitutional amendment that recognized women's right to vote